Australian Geophysical Observing System

AGOS - Monitoring and understanding the physical state of the
accessible crust

Background

AuScope’s Australian Geophysical Observing System (AGOS) is funded through the Education Investment Fund (EIF3) designed to augment existing NCRIS AuScope infrastructure with new capability that focuses particularly on emerging geophysical energy issues. It will build the integrated infrastructure that facilitates maximum scientific return from the massive geo-engineering projects that are now being considered – such as deep geothermal drilling – in effect building the platform for treating these as mega geophysical science experiments. AuScope AGOS infrastructure will enable collection of new baseline data including surface geospatial and subsurface imaging and monitoring data, thereby providing for better long-term management of crustal services, particularly in Australia’s energy-rich sedimentary basins.

The Geospatial Observatory is providing access to geodetic instruments that support the measurement of the deformation of the solid Earth. The Earth Sounding Network is providing a new generation of passive imaging and monitoring capability via a large pool of specially designed equipment. The Subsurface Observatory is allowing experimentation and subsurface data collection in and around existing boreholes. The Geohistory Laboratory is providing analytical equipment to unravel the thermal structure of the upper crust. The Inversion Laboratory is building open source computational software for geoscience inversion problems. The Geophysical Education Observatory is combining real time monitoring of the Australian continent as a tool for promoting geoscience education across the curriculum.

Project Description

AuScope AGOS will build a nationally integrated research infrastructure platform focused on delivering the understanding of the physical state of the accessible crust that is crucial to meeting secure, sustainable future energy needs. It focuses on boosting knowledge generation in the geosciences – already Australia’s leading research field by international measures.

The Earth’s crust provides many crucial services essential to the wealth and health of human society: the platform on which we live, the mineral, energy and groundwater resources on which we depend and, increasingly, a secure repository for our hazardous waste. A new level of understanding is required to comprehend the capacity of, and threats to, existing and emerging crustal services. In particular, the provision of cheap and secure, reliable and sustainable energy into the future will be predicated on our success in meeting this challenge.

To achieve this, AGOS will deliver new, cheaper ways of monitoring, imaging and modelling the accessible crust and its resource inventories in unprecedented level of detail. It will build on the estimated multibillion-dollar investment in deep drilling through provision of a national subsurface observatory, making existing deep boreholes available to the geoscience research community. Allowing both direct and indirect probing of the upper 5km of the crust, AGOS will provide the first integrated crustal observatory, augmenting remote geophysical methods with new capability in direct subsurface methods.

AGOS will provide the infrastructure that will underpin the geophysical research communities, and provide a platform for training the next generation of geophysical researchers. Strengthening geophysics research and training is a major national issue. Capacity-building is required for the next generation of geophysical and geoscience challenges. More than 100 researchers based in the 14 partner organisations, together with collaborating scientists from all national geophysics centres, will have access to the infrastructure and, through research projects, deliver new PhD graduates across the country, while also delivering new possibilities for the broader community in energy provision through geothermal, waste storage and groundwater.

Understanding the accessible crust, and the services it can provide, will provide crucial information as we rebuild our energy production infrastructure to insure that it best serves the needs of both present and future generations. In providing new options for secure energy supply AuScope AGOS will help underpin a modern productive competitive economy.

Description of Infrastructure

AuScope AGOS will create specific capability for enhanced data acquisition, and simulation capabilities, for the geophysics of the shallow crust of the Australian continent and will deliver a new geophysical observing capability designed to characterise and monitor the physical state and behavior of the accessible crust.

It will build on the infrastructure developed by AuScope in geospatial and imaging areas making available new seismometers, borehole strain meters, GPS stations, and a host of other scientific instruments to provide new capability exploring new realms of the continent – from the ocean fringe to the deepest levels of the crust accessible by drilling. This targeted investment will deliver an integrated observing system across the Nation involving: